Black Panther Party of Northern California - Freedom Archives

REPORT FROM FUNK CITY ., .
There are a lot of things which can
hit you upon first walking behind the
Reflecting Pool into Resurrection City,
U .S .A . :
Some people talk about the mud . It
is a sea of mud which is everywhere,
stretching from plywood shanty . t o
plywood shanty, covering your shoes
and socks, trailing on your pants,
and somehow' getting up to your face
in little brown splatters . It has
rained on the, average of three times
a week in D . C . since the Poor People's
Campaign began in mid-May, and
'the once-grassy plot where Resurrection
City now stands has turned from
bright green to a muddy reddish
brown . Some of the houses are like
little islands, completely surrounded
by water which refuses to dry even in
the heat .
Some people first notice the shanties
themselves . Most were built in
V-shape up from their plywood flooring,
with no area to stand in and only
enough room for bed and belongings
. Most of the Brothers and Sisters
do little else but sleep and
dress in their shanties . Some, however,
have planned on longer stays,
and have built up duplexes, three-and
four-room flats, and even two-story
ho~xses, all from the original one
room :"V" plan . Almost everybody has
slapped some paint upside their shanties
and the inspirations range from
"000 Poor Avenue,", "House of Ma~colm
#1" and "Carl B . Stokes says "Cleveland
Now :" to the out-of-sight
paintings of the "Wall of Hunger^ or
the New Breed center .
The thing that hits most folks
first, though, is the smell . Collecting
garbage for 3,000 people ain't no
small thing, especially when they're
living in such small quarters . It is
a smell of rotting trash., hot mud,
and the sweat of the people, all increased
by the 90-degree heat . To~
tell the truth, though, it was hard
for me to tell the smell in Funky City,
as it's been called, from the
rest of the D.C . ghetto, where garbage
pickup by the government has
been less than perfect . One thing
you do notice, however, is that there
are no rats in Resurrection City, even
though they are a hazard in the
rest of Washington . Maybe they
drowned in the mud . .,
This report was written one
week before Resurrection City
was closed down by the enemy,
and comes to BLACK P06VER exclusively
by one of our reporters
on the scene there .
But the thing I dig about Resurrection
City is Black People, my people .
We came from all over the country ;
from the ghettos of Chicago, from the
waterfronts of Oakland, from the
hills of Pittsburgh . It must be the
first time since we were ripped off
to this country . 400 years ago that
these many Black People from these
many areas have been able to spend
this much time together . The Sisters
are fine and the Brothers are strong ;
there is the constant hum of coming
and going,
ing .
of building, and of liv-
It hasn't always been pleasant,
full of Brotherly and Sisterly love .
A sister was found in the Reflecting
Pool one morning, her throat cut . An
immediate problem for the SCLC staff
was to keep Brothers and Sisters from
fighting each other, and from stealing
what little one another had . A
Love Supreme for our Black People
does not come by magic, we learned,
but by a
example .
long process of teaching and
Another problem has been the white
people . They seem to be everywhere,
although they are greatly outnumbered
by the Brothers and Sisters . They
range from hippies to liberals to
radicals to the truly poor whites,
who are without a doubt the nastiest
people I've seen . Although food is
free and easy
non-residents,
to obtain, even for
I watched a white man
from the hills of Tennessee collect
half-eaten oranges, and sandwiches
after every meal, stuffing his pockets
with them .
"The white man been messing with
them clouds," an old Brother who
moved from his D .C .
home to Resurrec-
tion City told me . "Ain't rained
this much in Washington in all my
life, and I been- .here some time . T
believe the white man is putting
something in them clouds to make it
rain ."
PAGE 3 gLpCK POWER
It has gotten so bad that everytime
a plane flies over Resurrection City,
a brother groans, "Oh hell it's gonr.a
rain tonight ." And it usually does .
At night, under one of the big
tents, there is entertainment . Sometimes
it is big Billy Stuart singing
"Summertime" and wailing on his portable
organ . Sometimes it is . just a
local D,C, kid who will someday be
headlining at the Howard or the Apollo
learning now where his fans and
his strength really are . Most of the
time, it is Resurrection Citv people,
patting their feet, cJ_apping their
hands, playing whatever instruments
they can find, singing spirituals or
popular rhythm and blues sides .
It was late afternoon on June 19,
the day of the giant "Solidarity Day"
march . The crowds were beginning to
thin in the summer heat, and the
speakers were all sounding the same
as they droned in the background .
The sister and I walked thigh-deep in
the Reflecting PooJ., feeling strangely
along the middle of the giant
world . Only a few children played at
the end of the pool . hundreds of
yards down the way .
The sister. looked up at the gigantic
Washington Monument which stood
on the hill at the opposite end o .f
the Reflecting Pool . It was huge and
white, thrusting its cone-shaped head
up into the vacant blue sky in defiance
.
"You know," she said absently, "the
monument always did remind me of the
Ku Klux Klan . That's what it looks
like ."
And it did, with the little'windnws
at the top staring out like two beady
cracker eyes, watching over all the
niggers in Resurrection City . At the
other end bulked the massive statue
of Lincoln, the "big Massah", who
scowled across the length of the pool
at the Ku Klux Klan .
I suddenly remembered what Malcolm
had said . .
BRAIN POWER
BOOKS
2630 San Pablo Avenue
Berkeley, California
Phone : 848-9210
"Without Brain Power,
Black Power is only Skin Deep.